"...My everything is dead..."
No Sleep, No Hoax, No Service, January 17 2006
"My legs are dead," I used to moan on the way home from swim practice. Breastrokers are plagued by dead legs and achy ankles. The carpool's freestyler would chime in about her dead sholders, then the butterflier would say, "your shoulders? I had to do that whole set...FLY," and the freestyler would pipe down because fly always trumps free when it comes to dead shoulders.
My everything is dead.
Two weeks ago, I started another writing job. It's more of a reality show, so writing isn't the right word. My credit is
consultant. It ends in March, the week before I go back on the road. I'm learning new stuff, working with people I really like, it's all good on that front.
But... the only thing that matters is that I can't get to sleep before 4 AM, no matter how tired I am. Even if my legs are shaking from exhaustion, my mind is racing, and I can't sleep.
I've seen people not sleep, in movies, in a Twilight Zone, but you can't imagine how bad it feels til you can't do it. You can't sleep.
In eleven days, I have fallen apart. I can't workout, I look like shit. I'm not alive onstage; I plow through sets trying not to stutter. When I get tired, my mouth slows down and syllables get jumbled and the only solution is to peel off the top of my head like Anthony Hopkins did to Ray Liotta's in the last Hannibal movie so I can point the audience to the sentences that are trapped in my brain.
What a decadent Roman life I led after
Too Late with the Aceman ended. Me and El Boyfriend, awake until 6 or 8 AM every day, sleeping til 3 or 4 pm. Never saw the sun, never. Bliss.
And now, my body clock won't wind back.
Nothing works. Not wine, not vodka, not wine
and vodka plus Tylenol PM. I'm going to use my WGA health insurance to get a doctor to write me a perscription to one of those little pills I've been seeing advertised on tv all night long. Ambien, Lunestra? Bring it, all of it.
Alcohol, drugs, mental impairment and a growing inability to express real emotions... yes, it's good to be writing again.
